There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.

It's a lot easier to tell the truth usually.

I like home recordings and studio recordings just as much as each other - I don't think one is better - but for this record I wanted to see what I could do in a real studio with real producers.

I didn't know how many people knew who Ferdinand was.

I didn't think I was gonna be playing on the Oscars or anything.

I don't think that Dreamworks would have signed me expecting to really mess around with whatever it is I do.

I actually don't think that I'm gonna sell a lot of records.

I wondered if I would talk about drug use. But I guess, why hide it?

But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees.

Well, I try not to think about the general public since I have no idea what the general public is and I don't think anybody does.

I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.

It was kind of ridiculous to carry it up to a certain point and then drop the ball or the bomb, like quitting the band right after we had signed to Virgin.

I was coming off of a lot of psyche meds and other things.

It's just that a lot of songs that are popular right now, they don't have any meaning.

My girlfriend at the time convinced me to send these songs to Cavity Search. When they wanted to put out my record I was totally shocked.

If you play acoustic guitar you're the depressed, sensitive guy.

I don't really like New York better than Portland. It's just a different place.

It touches on drug use. I got caught up in that for almost two years.

I was trying to do the same thing that I always do which is make an interesting record.

I just wanted to move out of Portland to do something.

I didn't have a hard time making it, I had a hard time letting it go.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head that seems more important than something designed to raise money to keep something going that keeps IV drug users from dying.

There are lots of things I like about playing in a band, the things I can't do by myself you know.

I'm just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel.

There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.

The band's filter, but playing live is a lot of fun.

I mean people just have a way of - y'know they'll review your record in two sentences and put you in this little stupid box that you don't want to be in.

Because God only knows why people like what they like and don't like something else.

And I'm not trying to write heavy songs.

I watched myself put my paw in the bear trap on that one because there was this clause about leaving members.

The best argument for mutual funds is that they offer safety and diversification. But they don't necessarily offer safety and diversification.

I'd like to do policy and I'd like to do philosophy, I'd like to be able to get into the depth, into the meat of the argument - that's the kind of stuff I want to do.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Theses officers were good friends, so it must have been a terrible argument, because the one who played chess with my father was so angry that he walked over to the dentist's house and got the dentist out of bed and shot him.

A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.

Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

If you feel yourself to be above the mass, speak so as to raise the mass to the height of your argument.

Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

One could drive a prairie schooner through any part of his argument and never scrape against a fact.

History is full of really good stories. That's the main reason I got into this racket: I want to make the argument that history is interesting.

Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples?

Given the difficulty of resisting such temptations over the longer run, a proper concern for the welfare of congressional souls may well be the ultimate argument in favor of term limitations.

It depends on the situation. I mean, on one hand there's the argument that people should be left alone on the other hand, there's the argument to wade in a stop slaughters in places like Bosnia and Kosovo and what we probably should have done in Rwanda.

The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the right.

I passionately believe that's it's not just what you say that counts, it's also how you say it - that the success of your argument critically depends on your manner of presenting it.

It's all very boring to say that we get along great and all that and sometimes we mock up come aggravation to make it interesting but the truth of it is that we get along so well we've never had an argument.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.